Dual STDP processes at Purkinje cells contribute to distinct improvements in accuracy and speed of saccadic eye movements

PLoS Comput Biol. 2022 Oct 4;18(10):e1010564. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010564. eCollection 2022 Oct.

Abstract

Saccadic eye-movements play a crucial role in visuo-motor control by allowing rapid foveation onto new targets. However, the neural processes governing saccades adaptation are not fully understood. Saccades, due to the short-time of execution (20-100 ms) and the absence of sensory information for online feedback control, must be controlled in a ballistic manner. Incomplete measurements of the movement trajectory, such as the visual endpoint error, are supposedly used to form internal predictions about the movement kinematics resulting in predictive control. In order to characterize the synaptic and neural circuit mechanisms underlying predictive saccadic control, we have reconstructed the saccadic system in a digital controller embedding a spiking neural network of the cerebellum with spike timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) rules driving parallel fiber-Purkinje cell long-term potentiation and depression (LTP and LTD). This model implements a control policy based on a dual plasticity mechanism, resulting in the identification of the roles of LTP and LTD in regulating the overall quality of saccade kinematics: it turns out that LTD increases the accuracy by decreasing visual error and LTP increases the peak speed. The control policy also required cerebellar PCs to be divided into two subpopulations, characterized by burst or pause responses. To our knowledge, this is the first model that explains in mechanistic terms the visual error and peak speed regulation of ballistic eye movements in forward mode exploiting spike-timing to regulate firing in different populations of the neuronal network. This elementary model of saccades could be extended and applied to other more complex cases in which single jerks are concatenated to compose articulated and coordinated movements.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Cerebellum / physiology
  • Eye Movements
  • Neuronal Plasticity / physiology
  • Purkinje Cells* / physiology
  • Saccades*

Grants and funding

This research has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation under the Specific Grant No. 945539 (Human Brain Project SGA3). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.